An Uncommon Education
by whatthefoucault
Summary: Set post-Enlightenment. Turlough has a lot on his sleepless, tired mind, and the Doctor has just put the kettle on for tea.
1. Chapter 1

"Who are you?"

They had both been so absorbed in their respective tasks that a minute passed before one noticed the other. Turlough, on being seen, had done his best not to impersonate a startled deer, but suspected he may have failed horribly.

"Oh," he said, as casually as he could under the circumstances, leaning affably against the TARDIS console, "my name's Turlough. Is this your box?"

"This is my TARDIS," replied the other man, eyeing Turlough with surprise and suspicion. "I'm the Doctor. What are you doing here?"

"Well, you know, just, took the transmat capsule up to that weird ship out there, and then... your door was open?" he shrugged.

"The door was open," repeated the Doctor with a tight-lipped nod. "Fair enough. Aren't you going to get in trouble for missing class?"

Turlough rolled his eyes. "I would have thought it was fairly obvious that I'm not as young as I look," he scoffed.

"Yes, well, neither am I, I suppose," replied the Doctor.

"I, umm, I see your check-engine light's flashing," Turlough grinned nervously. "Would... you like me to take a look?"

* * *

"Vislor," observed the headmaster, "that's rather an unusual first name, isn't it, young man?"

"It's Czech, sir," Turlough bluffed, nervously adjusting his shirt cuffs. Civility, paired with a few well-placed fabrications, he thought, would serve him better than tight-lipped belligerence: after all, the headmaster seemed, at least for the time being, to be affable enough, and it would not be in his best interest to antagonize him.

"But surely – "

"My mother was Czech," he replied, anticipating the question.

"Ah, of course," nodded the headmaster. Any past-tense mention of parents tended mercifully to mean a quick change of subject. It was something no one seemed willing to confront, which suited Turlough well enough. "I see your solicitor's put your registrations in order, so I'll have Mr. Parkhurst show you to the dormitory and help you get settled in. You can start classes tomorrow morning, all right?"

The headmaster stood then; Turlough followed suit, accepting a firm handshake.

"Thank you, sir," said Turlough.

"I think you'll like it here at Brendon, young man," beamed the headmaster, handing Turlough a stack of schedules and information.

"Oh yes," agreed Turlough, inwardly concerned that his attempted smile had only reached as far as a grimace.

* * *

The TARDIS console room was bright and sterile, all white and lights and those funny polka dots on the walls – much too much illumination for such a late hour. At this point in his flagging wakefulness, Turlough would likely not have minded another power failure.

Or a dimmer switch, whatever was easier.

He found himself engrossed in sketching the hat stand, of all things: meticulously crosshatching all the shapes and shadows of that corner of the room nearly distracted him from his troubled thoughts. His sketch looked darker than the corner itself, but that was to be expected. Tegan had long since shuffled off to bed, exhausted and confused; the Doctor, as far as he knew, had gone to the electrical room to tinker for a while, or perhaps if he had any sense himself, had gone to bed as well. Thus, Turlough found himself alone, with only the ceaseless hum of the TARDIS engines to keep him company.

And the hat stand, he supposed. The hat stand felt so out of place in the room, yet oddly at home as well, just as Turlough himself felt with Tegan and the Doctor. He had that in common with the hat stand; perhaps they were kindred spirits in that way, he thought. He was just tired enough, it turned out, that it nearly made sense to compare himself to a piece of furniture.

"Tea?" asked the Doctor, setting a cup down beside him. Turlough had been too preoccupied with his work to notice that the Doctor had entered the room until he spoke.

"Ooh, ra_ther_," agreed Turlough with a sigh of relief, blowing gently on the surface of the hot liquid, watching the steam roll off in into the air.

"Shouldn't you be in bed by now?" queried the Doctor.

"Can't sleep," sighed Turlough.

It should have come as a greater surprise to him that the Doctor had not evicted him as soon as his betrayal had been revealed; it seemed, however, that the Doctor was prone to strange bouts of compassion. Turlough was unsure if he could have lived with himself had he completed the act he had been contracted to perform.

"You know you don't have to wear that uniform anymore if you're not going back to the school," observed the Doctor, surveying Turlough's suit.

"I know," said Turlough, "but I like it, actually."

"It does suit you," replied the Doctor, awkwardly ruffling his hair. Turlough smiled inwardly.

He was rather loath to admit that he actually preferred his Earth wardrobe to the sorts of bland grey Trion work clothes he had always considered to be profoundly unflattering at best. With a few strategic adjustments, that three-piece school suit of his had turned out to be rather smart. Possibly even a bit sexy, he thought.

The P.E. uniforms were perhaps a bit _too_ sexy for an institution populated almost entirely by underage boys (and, until recently, one justifiably disgruntled twentysomething), though Turlough now slightly regretted not having exploited those snug little blue shorts to his benefit while he had the chance. He might have done, he thought, had there been anyone at Brendon worth seducing. There had, of course, been that one time, but that had not been planned, and he could not say now whether shorts would have made the difference.

There were, on the other hand, numerous times when humans got dressing themselves horribly, horribly wrong. Tegan, he had come to learn, was invariably a good object lesson in what not to wear. It was rather transparent to anyone with even the remotest grasp on social cues that Tegan did not like him. She had seemed to take issue with his moving into that Adric chap's old room – it was a serviceable enough room, though he would not have minded sleeping elsewhere. It seemed silly to begrudge him that, he thought.

* * *

Turlough had quickly become adept at faking a case of the sniffles in order to exempt himself from the more disagreeable sporting events at the school. It was there, beneath the shade of the trees that stood just beyond the pitch, that he made the acquaintance of Hippo, who appeared to be exempt from absolutely anything that required the slightest physical exertion.

"Are you going to eat that entire thing?" he asked with a disapproving sneer, watching Hippo shovel in another fistful from his family-size packet of jelly tots.

"That was the plan," muffled Hippo between chews. "My doctor's got me on a horrible new health regime. I'm starving! Fancy a few?"

Turlough shrugged. "Why not?" he replied, accepting a small handful of colourful sweets. Turlough's favourites were the yellow ones. They were meant to be fruit-flavoured, he was fairly sure, but he had not found any fruits in nature that tasted anything like them.

Hippo's father was the head of British Wotsits - Turlough could not remember what; some dull industry or other, he imagined. He also had a girlfriend he saw at weekends, or so he said. Apart from Hippo, Turlough was as civil as needs required, but more or less kept to himself. He was not keen on being The Ginger One in some adolescent band of outsiders; he was well-liked enough besides, except perhaps by some of the faculty, and that was to be expected. He was flogged, once, for ghostwriting a history assignment for Huw Cartwright in exchange for a Talking Heads cassette which, it turned out, he was not especially keen on after all.

"Nice day for not playing rugby though, eh Turlough?" said Hippo, tipping the last of the sickly powdered sugar that had settled to the bottom of the packet into his mouth.

"It's fine," sighed Turlough. "Are you trying to kill yourself, Hippo? You know there are easier ways of doing it."

"Oh give over," replied Hippo, crunching on his mouthful of fructose.

"Suit yourself," shrugged Turlough.


	2. Chapter 2

"I didn't expect anyone else to be awake," said Turlough, tucking his sketchbook under his arm as he followed the Doctor into the kitchen.

"Neither did I," said the Doctor, venturing into the refrigerator as Turlough sat down.

The kitchen was distinguished from the console room largely by the fact that the typical whirring engine sounds heard throughout the TARDIS were joined here by the oddly harmonic hum of the refrigerator. The refrigerator itself, some might have argued, was a superfluous instrument in an otherwise thoroughly modern kitchen outfitted with a meal-generating automat, but Turlough at least had the aesthetic sense to recognise that there were times when only farm-fresh eggs or genuine wild strawberries would do. Besides, no matter how many times he tried to reprogram it, the food dispenser never made his camembert quite as runny as he liked it.

"Couldn't sleep either?" asked Turlough, drumming his fingers against his cup, an ugly sort of stoneware thing in blobby brown and blue glaze.

"No, I suppose I couldn't," replied the Doctor, settling down at the table beside Turlough. "I was thinking about installing a dimmer switch in the console room tonight. Milk and sugar?"

"Oh," startled Turlough, astonished by their apparent moment of hive-mindedness. "Um, yes, thank you."

A long moment passed in uncomfortable quiet. Turlough had lost count of how many spoonfuls of sugar he had sifted into his drink.

"I don't suppose Tegan would mind if I went out the nearest airlock," he mused quietly, staring into the milky nebula that shifted and swirled through his tea as he slowly stirred.

"I would," said the Doctor, stilling Turlough's wrist with his hand. Their eyes met then; the Doctor's concern confounded Turlough as much as it was comforting. "She'll come round, she'll understand. It hasn't been easy for her, you know. You've got to give her time."

"Of course," Turlough agreed, sipping his tea. It was warm and comforting: he had made it so milky it was almost as beige as the Doctor. "You can't blame her for not trusting me though, can you?"

The Doctor's gaze moved downwards again to his tea. He let out a long, heavy sigh. "No," he said, at long last, "but a lesser man would have taken the easy way out as soon as he had the chance, and what you did wasn't easy. You're stronger than you think, you know."

A lesser man indeed, thought Turlough. He did not feel brave, anything but. He nearly did kill the Doctor, once, before he had the chance to know him: an act of desperation, of self-preservation, though perhaps of cowardice. He had felt no malice towards the Doctor, only remorse: he was remorseful still, and wished they could have met under any other circumstances.

"Do you think he'll be back?" asked Turlough.

The Doctor's gaze fell to the floor before he spoke. "I doubt that's the last I'll have seen of the Black Guardian, but I don't think he'll ever come after you again," he said with a sad, apologetic smile. "Is that why you can't sleep, Turlough?"

"Oh, I don't know… Good tea, though?" Turlough smiled pathetically.

"Quite," agreed the Doctor.

"Doctor, do you…" Turlough was unsure of how he had meant to finish the question, letting it hang unspoken between them instead, resting his hand uneasily on the Doctor's shoulder. He wished to atone and to forget, to run and to stay with the Doctor forever. He wished to see the universe and to go home - but home, he feared, was now a memory.

* * *

Turlough had managed to slip out from under the watchful eye of the academy unnoticed once, on a class trip to the National Gallery, but the city was noisy and the narrow streets had a distinct, unpleasant odour - almost as bad, he thought to himself, as the change rooms at school after a rugby match. He had made it as far as a small record shop in Soho, trading in most of his pocket money for a small collection of LPs tucked discreetly into his book bag: records with strange, dark pictures on the cover and names like Joy Division and Wall of Voodoo. He was able to duck casually back into the tour group in time for a room full of Turners, radiant and comforting. Turner's sunsets reminded Turlough of the skies on Trion; he had certainly never seen any sunsets that beautiful on Earth. He half wondered if Turner had been some kind of prisoner from another world himself, nothing to keep him company but his memories of the skies of his own home, wherever it might be, but that was stupid of course, a mere idle fancy.

* * *

The Doctor had the curious habit of keeping his hands in his pockets more or less whenever he was not using them. Turlough wondered if he noticed he was doing it. Turlough wondered if the Doctor noticed his own curious habit of buttoning and unbuttoning his jacket - or his shirt cuffs when he was not wearing his jacket. It was something he did when he was nervous, which was often. Turlough had many things to be nervous about.

"You've been so kind," he said, buttoning and unbuttoning, before he noticed and stopped himself. "I'm not sure I understand why."

"I was stranded once too," replied the Doctor, gazing at the ceiling.

"I'm sorry," replied Turlough, sipping his tea. He was tempted to press for details, but thought better.

"I was lucky," he said, sighing heavily. "Also, I liked you."

He smiled, then. Turlough blinked.

"Oh," he blushed, setting his cup on the table.

That was the trouble with being all freckles and no pigment, he thought: it was nearly impossible to hide when he blushed. It was not as though it happened often, but when it did, it would have been nice to be able to keep it to himself.

"I couldn't hurt you," Turlough said quietly. "Not on purpose. I couldn't, I... you know that, don't you?"

"I think I do," replied the Doctor.

"Doctor, I'm sorry," said Turlough, his voice barely a whisper. "I'm so sorry."

"I know," said the Doctor, covering Turlough's hands with his own.

There was what seemed to be a tiredness that hid just behind his youthful, duckfluffy features, a ferocity that nearly betrayed his gentle expression. The temptation to ask him everything was admittedly great, but Turlough understood well the need to keep some things to oneself.

It had not been hard to keep secrets at Brendon: when one began with "my parents are dead," most people's lines of questioning ended pretty quickly, replaced by that horrible, patronizing look of awkward sympathy. Some offered hollow gestures of charity, but most looked on with wordless pity, apologized, then left him alone.

The Doctor said nothing, stroking Turlough's hands with his thumb, his expression unreadable and beautiful. Turlough leaned in, his fingertips brushing a soft strand of hair from the Doctor's cheek. They both snapped back with a start when Tegan padded half-asleep into the kitchen in her pyjamas, as though they had been in the midst of some great secret.

"Hey guys," she mumbled, feeling squintingly about in the cupboard for a glass. Turlough and the Doctor nodded quietly as she poured herself a drink of water.

"Oh hello Tegan," Turlough shrugged sheepishly.

"Don't you need sleep to live? You guys are weird," she concluded, shooting Turlough a suspicious look as she shuffled back into the corridor.


	3. Chapter 3

Immediately following the incident with the Lethbridge-Stewart, Turlough had run from the room. He ran with far greater speed and ferocity than he thought himself able. He ran across the school grounds, back to his own cramped lodgings, and remained there until the following morning, later feigning stomach flu to anyone who asked. He sat, almost unmoving, sleepless and in the dark; he played the same record on repeat for hours, attempting with little success to block out unwanted emotions, blinking out tears. He had never felt more alone in the universe.

Classes continued as usual for the next few weeks, and neither he nor the Brigadier made mention of what had happened. Turlough stared out the window through his lessons and tried hard to think of things like films he had seen or what the kitchen might be serving for tea, but his mind never managed to shift any distance from his self-inflicted failures. He wondered if the dissonance he felt bothered the Brigadier as well, the awareness of their connection and what had happened, shared and unacknowledged. In hindsight, he knew that he and the Brigadier had more in common than they could have known. It would have been nice if they could have been friends, but Turlough was never so lucky.

* * *

"There must have been _something_ you liked on earth," reasoned the Doctor. "I've always been rather fond of it, myself."

"Well, there are worse places," conceded Turlough, "I'm sure it's a nice place to visit, but..."

The Doctor half-nodded in understanding. Turlough sighed. "Some things I liked, I suppose," he continued. "History was all right, and this tea stuff, whatever it's made of. Art class was a bit rubbish, but I like drawing and painting… some of the music was pretty good too. Are you familiar with Echo and the Bunnymen, at all?"

The Doctor shook his head apologetically.

"They're quite good, actually," shrugged Turlough, drumming his fingers against his cup, fingernails ting-ting-tinging against the stoneware. "Earth's not the most horrible planet in the universe I suppose, for all its shouting and idiots and the smell, I just… I never wanted to leave my home in the first place. I never chose Earth."

"I know," replied the Doctor. "Neither did I, but that was long ago now, and I suppose I had rather grown to like it, at least."

A moment passed in silence as they contemplated their teas, Turlough buttoned and unbuttoned a few times, and the Doctor seemed to want to return his hands to his pockets, but settled instead on cradling his now-empty cup.

"So," Turlough began, slowly swirling the last translucent slug of tea in the bottom of his cup, "where do we go now?"

"Didn't you want to go home?" asked the Doctor.

"Of course I _want_ to go home, but what good would it do?" Turlough wondered aloud, staring long and hard at the table, mapping out shapes among the gold flecks that dotted the nearly opalescent surface. Of course he wanted to go home, he thought, but the likelihood was greater than not that he would be arrested as soon as he stepped out of the TARDIS, exiled again, or executed. Turlough was not quite so desperate as to desire a senseless death. "I'm afraid it's an idle fancy."

"For what it's worth, Turlough, you could stay a while, with us," suggested the Doctor. Turlough suspected he could hear a trace of hope in the Doctor's words.

"I think I'd like that," Turlough said quietly.

"Good," the Doctor smiled. Turlough felt his heart brighten a little with that confirmation; without quite meaning to, he found himself leaning nearer to the Doctor, drawing him into an almost desperate hug. The Doctor's arms encircled his waist gently, almost tentatively, as Turlough held on tightly, whispering apologies and gratitude against the Doctor's neck. He felt the gentle pressure of the Doctor's hands quietly resting against the sides of his body, not questioning or exploring, pushing or pulling: just present, and comforting. He closed his eyes, leaning his forehead against the Doctor's, and let out a sigh.

Turlough wanted to be good, he wanted to be trusted and brave; he wanted to be loved, and he wanted to be the Doctor's friend, but as sure as he could never go home, he knew he would not be granted that chance. The risk of being rejected again was almost too great. It terrified him, though he knew the Doctor would forgive him. The Doctor had already forgiven him far more than he deserved.

"I'm sorry," he whispered.

"It's all right," said the Doctor. Turlough took a deep breath.

The kiss was electric: the current fizzed through him at immeasurable speed. The Doctor seemed surprised, unsure at first of what to do, then bringing his hands to Turlough's face, leaning into him. Turlough felt his heart flutter with joy and quiet relief, his arms poised awkwardly around the Doctor's shoulders, terrified and grateful, sighing against the Doctor's lips. The Doctor hummed quietly in response, stroking the back of Turlough's neck. It was the sort of moment when the relative properties of time, or perhaps merely the experience of it, became so confused that he lost all sense of how long they remained quietly together. Turlough felt better being near him, as though he simply belonged there. It felt like understanding.

"That was," Turlough breathed, finding himself at a loss for properly descriptive words, allowing his fingertips to trace the contours of the Doctor's delicate features. The Doctor regarded him with an unreadable surprise, his fingertips softly tracing across Turlough's cheek, before letting his hands fall to the table.

"Oh, this isn't a good idea," the Doctor said gravely, tucking his hands back in his pockets with plaintive resignation. He looked bewildered, but that seemed to be his default expression, thought Turlough. The engine and the refrigerator hummed together in the background like a terrible minimalist tone poem.

"Doctor, I -" Turlough was unsure what else to say. Of course it had been a bad idea, he thought. It had been foolish to allow himself that kind of need, to believe that it could have been that simple, to fall in love even, possibly, a little. As far as ideas went, it had been a bit stupid, and he was not sure he would have been able to stop himself from allowing it to happen.

The Doctor hesitated, as though about to say something, but fell silent instead. Turlough wanted to take his hand, to reach out and hold on, but held back. He begged himself not to muck it up further, if he had not already, which he very much suspected he had.

"It just isn't," sighed the Doctor. "It never ends well."

"Nothing ever does," conceded Turlough, having nothing to lose. He stared at his hands, cupped awkwardly in his lap. It was neither the time nor the place, he thought, to press the Doctor for the cause of his misgivings, but he hoped, in earnest, that he may be able to allay them. "But that doesn't mean we can't try for a good beginning, does it?"

"I think we've missed the boat on a good beginning," observed the Doctor, with what might have almost been the trace of a laugh.

"A new one, then," Turlough ventured sheepishly, adjusting and readjusting his necktie, leaning into the Doctor's side, "a better beginning? I mean, if you want to?"

"A better beginning," repeated the Doctor with a small, smiling nod, grasping Turlough's hands in his own. "Why not?"

Turlough grinned, bringing the Doctor's hands to meet his lips.

"Good," he said.


End file.
